The new Eucomis cultivar is a product of a planned breeding program conducted by the inventor, Eddie Welsh, in Palmerston North, New Zealand. The objective of the breeding program was to produce new Eucomis varieties for ornamental commercial applications. The cross resulting in this new variety was made during January 2001.
The seed parent is an unnamed, unpatented, proprietary seedling of Eucomis comosa. The pollen parent is unknown, as the crossing resulting in ‘EUW061’ was an open pollination, with unidentifiable pollen parents. The new variety was discovered in February 2004 by the inventor in a group of seedlings resulting from the 2001 crossing, in a commercial nursery in Palmerston North, New Zealand.
Asexual reproduction of the new cultivar ‘EUW061’ by tissue culture was first performed at a commercial laboratory in Auckland, New Zealand in 2006. Plants were kept confidentially in the laboratory, with limited access, and only supplied to the inventor. Subsequently, ‘EUW061’ has also been reproduced by leaf and bulb scale cuttings, also confidentially and without access by the public to plant material. Asexual propagation by the above referenced means has shown conclusively that the characteristic and unique features of this cultivar are stable and are reproduced true to type in successive generations.